ROMEO CABRERA JR TASK 8 - LET’S DO THIS!

THE PLAYER: The whole thing was a disaster! – he did nothing but cry all the time –
right out of character – just stood there and cried […] Audiences know what to expect,
and that is all they are prepared to believe in.

(Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard)

Tom Stoppard was another 20th century playwright who wrote examples of drama that
pushed at the boundaries of what drama could be. There are many meta moments in his
absurdist drama Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, such as when an actor named only
“The Player” talks about his attempt to kill someone onstage for the entertainment of the
audience. He laments the fact that audiences already know what to expect—which is to say,
that no one will actually be hurt or killed onstage—and that they will not believe anything
else. Though Stoppard was not advocating killing someone onstage, he includes this anecdote
to make his audiences question their assumptions about drama.